Polygamy: Can You Have Your Cake And Eat It Too?

By Lizwa Sally

The week started off in high spirits this new month. One celebrity story stood out as it was a trending topic on Kenyan Twitter.

Kikuyu entertainer and sensation Samidoh was the talk of the town on Tuesday, facing applause and ridicule in equal measure on Social Media.

This came after he penned a heartfelt apology directed to his wife, addressing a post by his estranged “one-time” partner who took to social media to post about their secret affair. His fans took his apology to heart and applauded his honesty and commitment to work on his marriage.

This begs the question of, can you have your cake and eat it too? We can all agree that marriage vows are supposed to mean much more than just rhyming long lines. The institution of marriage is slowly losing its intended purpose. What is the essence of a monogamous partnership if one of you will go seek comfort outside of your partnership? Is life in a marriage that bad to an extent of making a fool out of a partner you vowed to respect and be faithful to in front of a congregation?

Having multiple wives is common in about a quarter of the world’s nations. This is predominantly in conservative male-dominated communities in Africa and Muslim-majority countries where it is part of traditional or religious customs.

Almost 1.5 million Kenyans – or 10 percent of the married population – are in a polygamous marriage, according to the latest data from the Kenya Population and Housing Census. But women’s rights groups say this a gross underestimate as most of these marriages are customary and not registered. Worse still, many women are unaware they are even sharing a husband as he may keep them in separate homes without informing them.

Many contested that Polygamy is an African man’s true nature and that men should never be embarrassed to claim their other families. They also contested that this not only reduces conflict among families but also keeps an open record of the man’s kin, to avoid scandals in the event of the death of the man. A polygamy is an option we can borrow from our Muslim brothers and sisters. This could also be a solution to reduce the high cases of infidelity in marriage as it also strings along with an increase in sexually transmitted infections and diseases among married couples.

Polygamy creates a clear social order, with distinct winners and losers. A dominant male wins because he can reproduce with as many females as he can reasonably control. Thus, he can “spread his genes” far and wide, producing much more progeny than he would be able to do under a different sexual regime. Polygamy from a biological and psychological point of view is attractive to men and has a number of advantages and shortcomings. Other advantages of polygamy are:

• Care, warmth, and affection provided by wives or mistresses.

• The complexity of choice disappears when you need to prefer only one companion for life.

• When parting with one, there are still others.

With this already known information, should modern men and women still consider polygamy a normal desire of human nature or something forbidden?